Aero Toy Store - AvBuyer.com

AERO TOY STORE
PROFILE
MORRIS SHIRAZI – FOUNDER & CEO, BEN SHIRAZI – VICE
PRESIDENT, RICHARD LAGGAN – CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER,
GARY ANZALONE – SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT
Aero Toy Store
has evolved in the
same way the
needs of our
clients have evolved.
- Gary Anzalone.
Aero Toy Store
The World on the Wing. by Dave Higdon
alking for the first time into
W
Executive Jet Center (EJC) at
Southeast Florida’s Ft.
Lauderdale Executive Airport
(FXE), one can’t help but be
impressed by the quality and scope of the
facilities. The level of attention to all the
small details demanded by a high-end business
aviation facility might seem unusual for
an independent FBO. That degree of attention
begets a commitment to quality and
service, though, which seems typical of EJC’s
parent, Aero Toy Store.
Satisfying the client and providing them
with consistently high-quality service and
attention to the details of their needs seems
to permeate throughout this family of aviation
oriented businesses. And Aero Toy Store
is not just a regional phenomenon. Aero Toy
Store also operates another comparably highquality
FBO at Dorval in Montreal, where the
company is expanding completion facilities
at the Canadian airport to help handle its
refurbishment load. Additionally, Aero Toy
Store opened an office at McCarran
International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada,
last year which serves its bustling domestic
and international sales.
The company has built its business on the
basis of a bustling trade in new and preowned
business-turbine aircraft. “Aero Toy
Store has evolved in the same way the needs
of our clients have evolved,” explained Gary
Anzalone, senior vice president. “Our clients
recognize that ‘time is money’, and we have
expanded our operations so that we can continue
to provide our clients with a turn-key
product in the shortest period of down time.”
After 15 years of successful work, the
folks at Aero Toy Store still buy many of their
new aircraft stock directly from the manufacturers,
as exemplified by orders for a new
Global Express XRS and two Learjet 60s that
the company announced with Bombardier at
last fall’s NBAA convention in Atlanta.
And let’s not forget the company’s ❯
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Aircraft Index see Page 4

AERO TOY STORE
PROFILE
AERO TOY STORE HELICOPTERS
AeroCarz operation. In fact, buying and selling
classic, vintage and investment-quality
collectable automobiles, a business avenue
squarely in line with the company’s mainstream
clientele, helped spawn the founders’
decision to move into business aviation. That
expertise in automobilia also influenced the
company to pursue and win an alliance with
a legendary Italian auto-design firm. With all
this, you need only to throw in a little rail
stock and the company’s motto could be
“Planes, Trains and Automobiles.”
“All of our clients are extremely busy people
and their time is important,” Anzalone
reiterated. “Each division of Aero Toy Store
has been designed to support our business of
buying and selling aircraft, keep our clients
in the air whenever they need to be, and
keep their lives simple in the process.
“Whether it be financing, refurbishing of
an aircraft or organizing charters, these are
all very involved processes that should be
handled by people with a high level of experience
and efficiency. Our goal is to keep the
process simple for our clients – whatever our
client’s need. It only takes one phone call…
we pride ourselves on our ability to handle
the rest.”
SALES WITH SELECTIVITY
It’s no accident that when Aero Toy Store
founder and CEO Morris Shirazi tapped
Bombardier for its XRS that the jet seller
opted for the Global Vision flight-deck system
announced only three days earlier at the
same convention. Aero Toy Store strives to
offer products that represent the best value in
flying hardware, using the highest available
technology for enhancing safety and utility.
“Foremost, we make it a point to listen to
the needs of our clients,” continued
Anzalone. This approach shows throughout
the fleet of available aircraft the company
lists, whether light, medium or large jet, or
helicopter. However, it can be a challenging
task, anticipating a market’s needs several
years in advance and ordering future stock to
meet that future need.
“If there is a product that meets these
needs, regardless of the manufacturer, we are
interested to be a part of it,” Anzalone
explained. “When you are talking about the
resale of new aircraft specifically, the risk of
unsold inventory is minimal for as long as
the manufacturers continue to have a backlog
of new aircraft positions.”
Not only does the company strive to
cover virtually every element of a client’s airtravel
needs – supplying aircraft through
ownership, charter or a time-share program –
but the company also maintains its aircraft,
and handles in-house its own refurbishment
of re-sale stock, as well as new aircraft completion
work.
That stock can include helicopters from
AugustaWestland, Bell, Sikorsky and
Eurocopter and jets from Bombardier,
Gulfstream, Boeing and others. “We are confident
that all of the manufacturers recognize
the merits of maintaining a deep log of aircraft
positions, solidified through strong
deposits,” Gary continued. “None of the
manufacturers want to promise production
capabilities that they are not going to be able
to meet and maintain for a long time to
come. For them it is fundamental supply and
demand.”
According to Anzalone, for 2007 the total
sales approached $1 billion dollars, with a
very diverse spread between pre-owned and
new, and rotor and fixed wing. And now the
company is moving ahead as a designated
factory representative for something all-new
in corporate aviation: a supersonic business
jet (SSBJ).
“Aero Toy Store is so proud to be appointed
as a factory representative of the new
Aerion Supersonic Business Jet,” Anzalone
said. “We are certain that this aircraft is the
future of our industry and we are excited to
be a part of it.”
A business aircraft capable of efficient
supersonic flight has been a recurring goal in
the industry, stretching back to the dawn of
the 1990s when Gulfstream, under Allan
Paulson, entered a partnership with Russia’s
Sukhoi Design Bureau to develop an SSBJ.
Until Aerion began logging letters of intent,
though, and taking deposits a few months
ago, no program had developed as far.
The potential for corporate operators to
leap oceans at Mach 1.6 has generated considerable
excitement in the market. “Just
imagine,” Anzalone offered, “New York to
Paris in 4 hours. Our clients share in our
enthusiasm as we have already secured 12
agreements in principle.”
As evidenced already, it has been a ❯
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Aircraft Index see Page 4

AERO TOY STORE
PROFILE
PININFARINA EDITION LEARJET
combination of opportunity and ambition that
fueled Aero Toy Store’s expanding international
presence.
Anzalone noted that “It is only recently,
through the development of several emerging
foreign markets coupled with higher values of
the foreign currency that we have elected to
ramp up our inventory to meet the Global
demands.”
And the company isn’t through pursuing
its international goals either. “We are always
vigilant of expansion opportunities, but we do
not want to compromise our efficiency by
becoming so large that we become inaccessible
to our core clientele,” Anzalone added.
“With that said, we do have our eyes on
Dubai.”
MAKING DOLLARS MAKE SENSE
Founder Morris Shirazi initially started Aero
Toy Store to provide aircraft finance services
to clients of his main business at the time, and
today finance services remain an important
element in the company’s efforts. With extensive
contacts with banks and other financial
institutions, both domestic and international,
the company is positioned to help the buyer
with a plethora of issues.
These contacts and the company’s depth of
experience can prove particularly valuable in
times of economic flux such as today’s. “We
have these conversations on a daily basis just
like everyone else,” Anzalone admitted.
“The bottom line remains that the demand
for late model aircraft continues to outweigh the
supply.
“As long as the foreign currencies continue
to thrive, it will be difficult for any foreign
investor to resist the values that exist currently.
You have to remember that even in a cautious
market, the corporate aircraft is still one
of your most powerful business tools.”
But the finance sales aspects proved to be
merely the seed for what Aero Toy Store has
grown to encompass.
COMPLETIONS WITH
PERSONAL IMPRINT
Aero Toy Store’s completion services are provided
by Jet Center Interiors, another division
of the company. Aero Toy Store is qualified
to facilitate the refurbishment of preowned
aircraft as well as oversee the completion
of brand new aircraft, while Jet Center
Interiors offers the added benefit of understanding
the owner’s needs from an
operator’s perspective.
From refurbishing an older jet to completing
the interior of a bizliner, the company
controls the process, working with the customer
from design through engineering to
oversight of creation of the interior components
and, of course, installation and return
to service.
“Aero Toy Store can provide an aircraft
completion at one-quarter of the time of
another premier completion center without
any compromise of the standards of the job,”
Anzalone revealed. Lest doubters question
the company’s commitment to quality and
competitiveness, they should check out the
company’s own Pininfarina Edition work on
its jets and helicopters.
Founded in 1930, the legendary Italian
design house Pininfarina is known for its
treatments of Ferrari, Maserati, Fiat – even
the Volkswagen Karmen Ghia. In 1986,
Pininfarina established Pininfarina Extra to
spread the parent company’s design work
into areas outside the automotive field in
which it had for so long been a major
influence.
Pininfarina Extra tapped Aero Toy Store
as the exclusive provider of Pininfarina
Edition aircraft and the Ft. Lauderdale company
made its first example a Learjet 60.
Since then, the company has offered special
edition Pininfarina versions of new helicopters,
and its signature creation, the Aero Toy
Store-completed Pininfarina BBJ.
❯ More information from www.aerotoystore.com ■
THE ROOTS OF
EXCELLENCE:
MORRIS SHIRAZI
STRIVES FOR PERFECTION
Long before Morris Shirazi founded Aero Toy
Store in 1993, he started down the path that
brought him here with the re-sale of a used
car, a transaction that brought the then-17year-old
immigrant a 50 percent profit on his
$400 investment – a $200 return that excited
and inspired him to make selling cars a lucrative
alternative to the job he had at the time
– working in a Montreal pizzeria.
By age 20, Shirazi had progressed to selling
cars for a local Chrysler dealer and he had
learned enough about the business two years
later to launch his own auto-wholesale business.
As that business expanded, Shirazi
acquired an exotic-auto showroom and
moved into the business of handling luxury
and collectable autos for a more-affluent
clientele. With the growth of his Montreal
exotic-auto business Shirazi transplanted his
business to south Florida and in 1985 The
Auto Toy Store was born.
After the move, Shirazi indulged his
adventurous spirit by learning to fly and, as
he became more familiar with the aviation
business he took his first step into the business
of aviation – buying, then re-selling, a
Cessna Skyhawk. Morris Shirazi also learned
of a need by some of his Auto Toy Store
clients for financing for their business
aircraft.
Aero Toy Store began as a side-business to
the auto operation, but with his drive to
excel, Shirazi decided that buying and
reselling airplanes at the lower-end of the
scale was a good beginning. What he really
strove toward, however, was a presence in the
aviation business selling the top-of-the-line
in corporate hardware to a clientele who
expect only the best in their purchase
experience.
After divesting the automobile operation
Shirazi built Aero Toy Store into the international
player it is today, serving clients’ needs
for resale, new and pre-owned aircraft purchases,
finance, maintenance, refurbishment,
completions, charter and time-shared access
to corporate aircraft, both fixed-wing and
rotary.
Morris Shirazi never lost that adventurous
spirit or his connection to the automobile
world. He re-entered the exotic auto business
with AeroCarz. And he continues to drive
competitively and can boast of road-course
wins at the 12 Hours of Sebring, Road Atlanta
and the ultimate in endurance road racing,
the 24 Hours of Lemans – a race the Aero Toy
Store twice won.
And that’s a long way from that day in
Montreal, when a teenage pizzeria worker
first glimpsed his potential with a $200 profit
on a used-car deal. “I guess I’m just a kid at
heart,” Shirazi has been known to say. “After
all, I named my company Aero Toy Store.”
126 WORLD AIRCRAFT SALES MAGAZINE – May 2008 www.AvBuyer.com
Aircraft Index see Page 4